From Research to Reality - the BBC Audio Research Partnership two year anniversary

From Research to Reality - the BBC Audio Research Partnership two year anniversary

After two years of the first collaboration of its kind for the BBC, the BBC Audio Research Partnership’s 2nd anniversary event gave us the opportunity to showcase our work to date to an audience of BBC-wide and international guests from Academia and industry.

Similar to the first conference the knowledge in the room was exemplary and we were able to stimulate an audience of high profile audio researchers with two excellent keynote speeches on the first day.

First Nick Zacharov from Delta Senselab talked about future multichannel sound systems, as considered for the consumer experience. It was a fantastic example of how inspiring and important it is to look beyond the boundaries of research fields to adapt methodologies and concepts.

Nick's knowledge about subjective evaluation and the parallels between evaluation methodologies used in the food industry and the sensory evaluation we use to evaluate "food for our ears" was a real eye opener.

Following Nick's talk, Prof. Ville Pulkki took us on his own personal journey through perception-based spatial audio, from academic ideas to the world outside. He discussed the application of academic ideas around spatial audio through making them available for free. He also explored the other side of the coin with his views on going down the traditional route of IP management and patenting.

These keynotes opened up the discussion about the key challenges in audio research for the Partnership and broadcasting in general. The first day concluded with James Cridland sharing some enlightening insights into how radio is made in different ways all over the world and where combinations of traditional broadcasting and IP delivery could lead to. In the video below you can find some views on the important areas of audio research from the conference attendees:

Details of other projects from the BBC Audio Research Partnership will be posted on this blog as the partnership progresses. In the meantime have a look at the video below for the personal highlights of our guests:

The technology fair showcased some impressive insights into possible futures of audio in broadcasting and how abstract concepts like object-based audio will lead to massive benefits for our audience and enable exiting new media experiences. In the video below you can hear from some of our guests on what they learned at the conference and their thoughts on the most important coming developments in audio research and the future for collaboration between the BBC, industry and academia.